the percentage of women age 40 and older across the country getting mammograms regularly, the percentage of women visiting the dentist annually and the percentage of women age 50 and older who receive screenings for colorectal cancer.

Other aspects of women’s good-health practices have gone downhill in recent years, such as fewer women getting regular pap smears. Moreover, the gendered health issues explored in the report card are aggravated by racial and socioeconomic divides. For example, while about 17 percent of white women lack health insurance coverage, the uninsurance rate is far higher among women of color–well over thirty percent for both Latina and Native American women. Black women can still expect to die several years sooner than their white peers.

While such problems stem from a complex array of causes, the bottom line is that both federal and state governments have largely failed to provide the resources and structural reforms in the health-care system needed to address chronic health needs.

The NWLC points out that this report card caps a decade of spotty performance: modest progress on a few health indicators (like falling death rates from some cancers) overshadowed by stagnation and even decline on many others (the rise of obesity and high blood pressure). Moving into 2011, policymakers have some serious work to do to make up for years of failing women.

Michelle Chen is a contributing editor at In These Times. She is a regular contributor to the labor rights blog Working In These Times, Colorlines.com, and Pacifica's WBAI. Her work has also appeared in Common Dreams, Alternet, Ms. Magazine, Newsday, and her old zine, cain.

Further

Lord, what would John Lennon have made of the Trump monster? Marking Thursday's 36th anniversary of Lennon's murder, Yoko Ono posted a plea for gun control, calling his death "a hollowing experience" and pleading, "Together, let's bring back America, the green land of Peace." With so many seeking solace in these ugly times, mourns one fan, "Oh John, you really should be here." Lennon conceded then, and likely would now, "Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."